The effect of violence on young health

In the last decade México has faced an increase in violence due to the reinforcing of local organized crime groups which main activities are drugs and people trafficking. This situation has involved an increasing violent environment which invaded all social spaces and it has affected the whole life of people of every age group. Particularly in Mexico, violence has an impact on its economic situation, social capital, but also on people health. Considering mortality as one of the most important indicators to diagnose the health situation of a population, undoubtedly youth was the most affected, because this is the group with the larger proportion of deaths caused by violence, however we must consider disability as a consequence of violence incidence. Consequently, it is important to develop methods to measure the magnitude of violence affectations on youth health, instead of data problems. In this paper we propose a methodology that let us approach indirectly to contrast this phenomenon through a standardized measure among populations. With data from census and vital statistics we compute DALY for each Mexican state, considering deaths caused by homicide and disabilities due to violence. We expect that the more violent states would have the larger effects.